


Ben

by pure1magination



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Childhood, Gen, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:32:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5775268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pure1magination/pseuds/pure1magination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Han, I’m pregnant.”</p>
<p>Han Solo’s heart stopped in his chest. He gave her an incredulous look. “You’re <em>pregnant?”</em></p>
<p>"Yes! I’m pregnant!” she repeated in that tone that implies Han has Ewok fur between his ears instead of an actual, functioning brain, and she launched into an explanation that left absolutely no doubt about how she’d gotten pregnant, but Han wasn’t really listening. </p>
<p>“How did this happen?”</p>
<p>Leia’s eyes widened impatiently. “What part did you not understand? Did your parents never have ‘The Talk’ with you?”</p>
<p>“I know how babies are made!” Han retorted grumpily. “I just…” He sat down and stared off into the distance. “How the hell are we gonna handle a kid?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ben

*

Leia was in the middle of an important council meeting when her water broke. She kept her head held high and continued with the meeting, despite the growing labor pains. Senators commented on her pale face and the sweat trickling from her brow, but she snapped at them that she was fine. The meeting ended half an hour early with Leia objecting that they hadn’t finished discussing the issues yet.

Han paced outside the hospital room. Chewie made the occasional comment, and Han snapped at him. He really wasn’t cut out for this. He kept asking Chewie, “What if she doesn’t make it? Do you think she’s gonna be okay?”

When a nurse finally emerged and informed him he had a baby boy, and that Leia was fine, Han beamed with relief. “Do you hear that, Chewie?” he repeated proudly, eyes glimmering. “I have a _boy!”_

Which was somewhat of a relief, because Han really had no clue how he’d have handled a girl.

And when he held that little baby in his arms for the first time, he was overwhelmed. “Hey, Ben,” he said softly. The baby screamed at him and cried. Han jiggled him softly, trying to calm him down, but the baby just screamed and cried louder and louder, going red in the face.

“Let me,” Leia said, reaching tiredly out for him.

Han deposited the baby in her arms like a hot potato. 

Leia stroked Ben’s face and cooed soothing things at him until he quieted.

Han leaned against a wall. He really had no idea how to do this.

*

Han Solo read every parenting book he could find. He read everything from how to change diapers, to when they could eat which foods, to when they started walking and talking and everything in-between. He was a textbook expert on parenting theories.

The trouble was, he had no idea how to apply these things in real life.

He figured out diaper changing all right, and he had a pretty solid handle on bathing him, but it seemed like the kid was constantly crying about one thing or another, and Han could never figure out what the kid was crying about right away. It always took him two or three tries before he figured out the kid was hungry, or his diaper was wet, or sometimes he was just cranky for no reason and he’d pass the kid off to Chewie.

It was really unfair; Chewie was better with his own kid than he was.

The big hairy beast (friend) would let Ben play with his fingers, tug on his fur. He’d make funny sounds. And Ben would stare at Chewie with fascination, confused, but quiet.

“Never figured I’d be a stay-at-home dad,” Han complained one night while he was doing the dishes.

“But you do it so well,” Leia said sarcastically, burping Ben over her shoulder. She was less than impressed with Han’s parenting skills; she was less than impressed with Han in general.

“Why thank you, Your Highness.” Han mock-bowed with a scrub brush in-hand. “At least I spend _time_ with him,” he griped quietly.

“I spend as much time with him as I can!” Leia argued, jostling Ben a little harder and patting his back more forcibly.

“Oh, sure you do!” Han replied with a bitter edge to his voice. “You spend all _kinds_ of time at home. That’s why you were here for his first smile! And his first laugh! And his first word-”

“He’s said his first word?!”

“Well, no, but you wouldn’t know that since you’re never here!”

Leia drew herself up to her full height, a defiant spark tilting up her chin. “I am here as much as I can be. But believe it or not, I have more _important_ things to do than babysit a washed-up outlaw and his walking carpet!”

Chewie objected loudly.

Ben started crying.

_“Washed up?!”_

“I have an _empire_ to run,” Leia concluded. “The _least_ you can do is take care of the baby.”

*

Han tried. He really, really tried. But sometimes, he just didn’t know how to handle his son.

At around age two, Ben started throwing temper tantrums. And no matter what Han did, there was no stopping them. Ben would scream and cry and throw things across the room, and no matter what tone of voice Han used, no matter what tactic- distracting, lecturing, comfort- it was like he wasn’t even there. He just… couldn’t reach Ben. There was nothing to do but let the temper tantrums burn themselves out. No kid could throw a temper tantrum forever.

Sometimes, they went on for _hours._

Han developed a new appreciation for earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones. So did ‘Uncle Chewie.’ It was a little jarring, seeing Chewbacca sporting a gigantic pair of headphones, but Chewie seemed content and they blocked out the incessant screaming, so Han really couldn’t judge.

‘Uncle Luke’ would visit occasionally, but he had his own thing going too: a Jedi training program he’d started up, with himself as Jedi master. And he got a lot of business, being the protegee of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Plus he was the guy that destroyed the Death Star and brought Darth Vader back to the Light. The kid practically bled star power.

Han was there for Ben’s first word, his first steps, his gradual switch to solid foods. Aside from a little help from Chewbacca, Han almost single-handedly potty trained him. He took the kid out to the park, taught him how to play every game he could think of, brought him to the zoo and the museums and bought him every book that caught the kid’s eye- most of them were about big predatory animals; Han supposes that should have been a sign. But the books made Ben happy, and they kept him quiet, so Han indulged him.

It wasn’t until Ben turned ten that he started really having problems.

* * *

Ben was ten years old when he had his first Force Vision. He didn’t understand it at first, brushed it off as some weird nightmare and went on with his day. But then the thing that he’d seen came true. Bright reds and oranges flashed across the television screen as a supervolcano explosion was broadcast on the galactic news channel. Ben ran to tell his father.

“What, what?” his father said, slightly cranky that he’d been pulled away from whatever-he-was-doing.

“Look!” Ben pointed at the television screen.

“Oh. Shit,” his father commented, listening to the broadcast. “That’s the planet your mother’s on…”

Ben watched the rest of the broadcast in numb silence. He overheard his father angrily trying to reach someone on the telephone who could tell him where Leia was.

And fortunately, Leia was fine. She was annoyed that she’d had to leave the planet before she could finish what she’d gone there for, and she was upset about the amount of preventable deaths that had happened, and seemed set on a track to fix the emergency alert system so they could avoid another tragedy like this in the future, but Ben curled in on himself in guilty silence. He’d known.

The next time Ben had a vision, he told his father about it, but his father was very dismissive about it and told Ben it was just a dream. Ben insisted that no, it was true; it had happened before. He’d known about the supervolcano.

This gave his father pause. “...All right. We’ll keep an eye out. But I am _not_ alerting an entire star system just because they _might_ have a meteor shower.”

His father was kicking himself later for not doing exactly that.

The death toll had been high; his mother was not pleased. In the midst of her ranting about all the safety protocol that had been overridden or flat-out ignored, his father managed to get a word in edgewise about how Ben _knew._

His mother stopped talking and looked at Ben with new eyes, something like fear shining in them. She approached him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “You _saw?_ You saw it happen..?” She searched his eyes, an insistence about her that would not be ignored.

“Yeah…” Ben admitted, scared.

“Ben!” His mother smiled. Ben couldn’t understand why she was smiling; it unsettled him. She looked into his eyes like she was saying something very important. “You can use The Force.”

* * *

“The Force?” Han repeated. “Our kid can use The _Force?”_

“Yes, he can,” Leia replied with a mixture of ecstasy and fear.

“Isn’t that _dangerous?”_

Leia gave him a look. “Like _you’re_ one to talk?”

“No, I’m serious! Isn’t there a light side and a dark side? The kid doesn’t know about all that stuff! He’s tapping into a power we know next-to nothing about! What if he...?” Han left the sentence trailing.

“You’re right.”

Han sat up and looked at her.

“What? You’re _right._ I’ve felt the Dark side of The Force. I feel all of it… The Dark side is growing stronger.” She fell silent for a moment, solemn. “We should send him to Luke.”

“Luke! No offense, sister, but isn’t he kind of _busy?”_

“Running a _Jedi school._ He’d be perfect to train our boy! If anyone knows the ways of The Force, it’s him.”

“So, what, you’re saying we just… send him _away_ to the farthest reach of the _galaxy?”_

“Do you have a better idea?” Leia snapped.

Han held up his hands. “No, Your Highness. But… How do you think the _kid’s_ gonna take it?”

* * *

Ben was sent away to Luke’s Jedi training school rather unceremoniously. He hugged his father and uncle Chewie goodbye; his mother couldn’t make it. She had an ‘important meeting’ today.

Luke’s eyes twinkled when he saw Ben. He introduced the awkward-tall, quiet boy to everyone as his nephew, his hand proudly resting on Ben’s shoulder as Ben tried to sink into himself.

A lot of the kids seemed nice at first, but it seemed like the longer Ben stayed there, the harder he tried, the more kids turned away from him. He was clumsy and unsure. His body had hit a growth spurt earlier than everyone else’s and he wasn’t really in control of his limbs. His nose was too big for his face. His mouth gravitated to one side. His teeth were large and a little oddly placed. And even though he was barely eleven, he was already plagued with acne.

Kids picked on him for every flaw in his physical appearance. Sometimes they jeered to his face; other times there were cruel whispers behind his back. They were all young padawans, some faster learners than others, some stronger in the Force.

But Ben was the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. He was born from two people who had saved the galaxy, who were brave and famous and who nearly everyone idolized to some extent. His namesake, Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom Luke still sometimes referred to as ‘old Ben,’ had been yet another Jedi legend, one of the first to overcome death- the very master who had trained Darth Vader. Everyone had been a little wary of Ben at first, sure that he was just as powerful as his namesake and his relatives.

It became clear, though, that Ben was weak. He could use The Force, but his efforts were too unfocused. He was too unsure of himself.

He had nightmares: some of his parents fighting, some of events that were yet to come. Night after night, his dreams bled with more clashes of red and splashes of blood. He was no longer sure when events would happen, or even what those events were. He would wake up sometimes in a cold sweat, heart racing, wondering whose death he’d just witnessed.

There was no relief. The other young padawans never ceased their teasing and shit-talking. Luke's disappointment weighed heavily on his shoulders. Ben lived in a constant state of bitter misery.

His parents hadn’t come to visit him since sending him off to this godforsaken school, not _once._ He remembered his mother saying countless times that there were more _important_ things to tend to, his father shutting down and backing off, his hands metaphorically thrown up in surrender. He was completely unsurprised to learn that their marriage had ended and his father had run off somewhere; no one knew where.

Aging did nothing to help Ben. He only grew more awkward and gangly; the acne on his face only worsened. He got a crush on a fellow padawan- a girl two years younger than him who carried herself with such confidence that Ben was enthralled- but her friends found out about his blossoming crush, and told her, he overheard her laugh and say “As if I’d _ever_ go out with _Big-Nose Ben!”_

“Besides,” one of her snooty friends added, “Jedis are forbidden to love. So it’s really better for none of us to date in the first place.”

Ben stomped to the training room, took out one of the practice lightsabers, and slashed at everything in sight.

* * *

Snoke infiltrated the Jedi training school in disguise. He’d felt a promising shift in the force in one of the young padawans. Many of them were tinged with the pull from the Dark side, but most of them were too foolishly proud of the Light, and would only convert under circumstances which, while pleasurable to dish out, did take some time and effort to conjure.

But this boy… So full of frustration and rage, fear and hate. He knew Luke sensed it. But Luke foolishly believed that the power of the Light would be strong enough to override the Darkness in this boy’s heart.

Snoke new better.

He approached the lanky, dark-haired boy scowling at the table. “What is it they call you?” he asked smoothly. “'Big-Nosed Ben'?”

“Go away,” the kid said miserably.

Snoke smiled. He sat down.

“Are you deaf?” the kid said angrily. “I said _go away!”_

“I have a proposition for you.”

“If it has anything to do with plastic surgery, I’ve heard enough jokes about that to last me a lifetime. Thanks.” Ben stood up to leave.

“You’d like to crush them. Wouldn’t you.”

Ben paused.

“All those young padawans that call you such _cruel_ things. A real mockery to the Light. How can they consider themselves ‘good’ when they are so _un_ good to you?”

Ben turned around slowly, looking at Snoke over his shoulder.

“They’ve hurt you,” Snoke said with knowing sympathy. “And they don’t even care. They do it for their own amusement.”

“How do you know this?” Ben clenched his fists.

“I, too, am strong with the ways of The Force.”

“You know, then, that I am not interested in whatever it is you have to offer.” Ben turned to walk away again.

“Even if I told you I could grant you the power to crush your enemies?”

Ben was silent for a long moment. Snoke felt the shifting thoughts. Felt his conclusion.

“...How?”

* * *

It was a slaughter unlike any Luke had ever seen. He didn’t understand where he’d gone wrong. Yet at the same time, something in his gut told him he should have known.

The mangled corpses and singed and severed body parts of his young padawans littered the once-peaceful hills. Blood was so thick on the ground, it was almost as though it had rained. Luke had never seen such destruction like this, not even during the war. So many innocents had died.

And the last man standing, a teenage boy gripping a homemade cross-blade lightsaber, was glaring victoriously at the carnage he’d wrought. He stomped furiously towards the temple and slashed at its wall, leaving a burnt scar singed into its side.

Luke raised his hand in a last-ditch effort to call Ben back to the light, but Ben only snarled at him and announced, “Ben is _dead._ ” He held his lightsaber in front of him, its red glow lighting his face from underneath. 

“I’m Kylo Ren now.”


End file.
